My recollection is that Stipe once described the song as being about a crush. Stipe has also described himself as an equal opportunity lech.I have long interpreted the song as being about a queer person having a crush and the tremendous stress of trying to navigate a social situation where you don't even know if the other person is queer or a homophobe or just what. I think the song is a wonderful piece of great art.
Stipe eventually came out as gay but previously declined to state a sexual orientation. I think he's a wonderful artist and I am especially fond of the song Losing my Religion which is what the above quote is about.
I guess the LGBTQ crowd probably wonders a lot why a mostly straight woman writes this blog. What makes me think I'm qualified to speak to their issues?
I probably had more girlfriends than boyfriends in adolescence. It was mostly because I had access and opportunity.
Spending time alone with girls I knew was easy to arrange. Not so much spending time alone with boys.
I was molested by my older brother from age 11 to age 13.5. Again, a case of Access and Opportunity because our older sister went off to college elsewhere, leaving us alone a lot for the first time.
I had a liberal mother who, for example, KNEW I started birth control at age seventeen because a friend of hers who worked at the pharmacy told her. She kept her mouth shut for a lot of years and just was grateful I was using protection.
So what I chose to read was not censored and I had a book about various birth control methods and statistical success rates in a locked drawer in my desk and I read Heinlein books and other things with some sexual content. My mother explicitly stated she felt it was better to READ about it as a means to get educated and largely butted out.
My mother was also very accepting and nonjudgmental about things like homosexuality. I ended up in therapy and spent many years sorting my baggage from being molested but I never agonized about my sexual orientation though I spent years trying to figure out how to define it and how much to say about it.
My experience has been that being too open about being not straight attracts excess unwanted attention from women who are interested in me and talking too much about anything convinces people it's "a big deal" even if the only big deal is that you find it an intellectual curiosity that you are trying to figure out the language and conceptual framing for.
People don't believe that though. They imagine it's an emotional burden that you can't let go of.
I unofficially adopted Genevieve and gave her a name to protect her psychologically from her extremely abusive parents. She was trans.
I also have a biological child who self identifies as asexual.
When he came out as asexual, it was a brief and undramatic conversation with his mom that we probably spent less than five minutes on, even though we are both very talkative people and can talk for hours. It was not a big deal.
Genevieve and my son are/were both too weird to hide that fact. I could CHOOSE to fly under the radar and implicitly agree with the world assuming I'm actually straight because I was married for twenty-two years and was a homemaker and as an adult I've almost exclusively had relationships to men with a few odd experiences that didn't quite fit in any specific category.
One woman who self identified as bisexual slept with a guy I knew online so she could tell me about it because she found me hot and I found him hot. It didn't lead to me and her hooking up but I imagine a lot of women would not have listened to her tale at all.
If I don't tell people such a story, they are unlikely to ever learn of it. Yet I still make a point of notifying men who are interested in me that I'm not actually straight because I don't want to end up in the ER because -- WHOOPSIE -- some homophobic nutjob learned that AFTER we locked lips.
So I've read a fair amount about human sexuality and talked to people enough to know that gay people frequently don't know what to call themselves when they are younger and frequently have heterosexual relationships in their youth before figuring out they don't really find the opposite sex attractive.
I'm sympathetic to that journey and have done just enough "gay" stuff to have to worry about potential negative consequences from homophobes about it.
But I never agonized about "Am I gay? Or bisexual? Or what?" It was more "What's the word for someone like me because I don't feel bisexual quite fits?"
And after spending some time on Metafilter, which is filled to the gills with extremely traumatized LGBTQ folks, and after thinking long and hard about people I cared about who were close to me and what they have to deal with in this homophobic trending world -- people for whom it's not really an option to let it fly under the radar -- I made a conscious decision to be open about being not straight and I largely talk about that HERE as a means to keep it from becoming some ISSUE that looms large in the minds of other people.
It's not a big deal to ME in most situations. It has caused just enough social friction for me to have sympathy for some of the complaints of MEN because one day when I was extremely tired some bitch at work was in violation of dress code and had her cleavage all prettily framed out and on display like a harlot and I couldn't keep my eyes off of it.
No, psycho bitch in violation of dress code NEVER forgave me.
Hello "feminist" assholes. If you don't want people staring at your tits, actually follow the fucking dress code and cover that shit up.
I mean MEN don't get to put their chest on display at work either. This is not some extreme requirement imposed only on women.
Anyway, I don't agonize about my sexual orientation but it has made me aware of LGBTQ issues. My son also doesn't agonize about his orientation and I feel strongly that our attitudes suggest that a lot of drama for the LGBTQ crowd is rooted in their FAMILY of origin not accepting them.
I'm not your family and I'm not adopting anymore troubled LGBTQ youths or whatever. Once was enough.
But I write because I'm keenly aware that the LGBTQ crowd desperately needs more good resources and I do feel very qualified to be a voice of reason in an informational way on at least SOME LGBTQ issues.
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